At every twist and turn, the sights, sounds, and smells of India surround you. In a short visit to this massively intense country, you encounter enough novel experiences to last a lifetime. At times India is mystifyingly beautiful and leaves us dreaming of wealthy maharajas ordering the construction of intricate palaces and fortresses. Make no mistake; India is not a comfortable place to visit. Filth, poverty, and suffering are abundant and constantly in your face. Some of the things we have seen will, unfortunately, be burned into my memory- like watching two street children (no more than 10 years old) huddled beneath a blanket doing drugs. I have lost count of the number of men, women, and children we have seen picking through mounds of putrid garbage searching for objects that they can use or sell. They sift through societies refuse alongside pigs, dogs, and sacred cows. Walking the streets early in the morning, India’s homeless, far too many of them children, huddle under blankets next to busy streets. During the daytime these children latch onto tourists’ arms pleading for money. They stand alongside the blind, dismembered, and disfigured vying for sympathy and support. They beg for help, but you realize that helping any one of these charity cases literally amounts to “a drop in the bucket,” there are just too many. India breaks your heart.
Many times, however, I have wished that India would break my ability to smell. Sewage, urine and feces from humans, cows, pigs, dogs, and, occasionally, camels or elephants are everywhere. In fact, India might be the only place in the world where if you don’t watch your step you might step in camel dung or trip over a dead dog (no, I am not making this up). Coming into Agra we watched as dozens of men, women, and children performed their morning rituals-squatting along the train tracks. Mental note-never walk along the train tracks in India. Each day, unsavory smells contrast mightily with exotic incense wafting through the air, and the wonderful spicy aroma of food being prepared. As I write this now, early in the morning in our hotel room, my mouth is watering from the smell of breakfast being cooked in someone’s home next door.
Last but not least in this sensory tour of India is sound. If you want to know what India sounds like go stand in front of your car and enlist a friend or relative to honk the horn over and over again. Mix that in with some revving auto-rickshaw engines, whizzing motorbikes, and a pinch of blaring Bollywood tunes and that is pretty much what it sounds like.
In tourist advertisements, India promotes itself, as “Incredible India.” Indeed, none of us can believe what we have seen, smelled, and heard. India truly is incredible. Glossy tourist brochures and posters of the country’s famous sites contrast greatly with the reality that greets you with every step. Two days ago, we crammed ourselves into a rickshaw and made our way to Amber Fort, just outside of Jaipur. We passed beggars, piles of garbage that made me want to wretch, and inhaled enough pollution to last a lifetime (at the end of each day a white tissue placed in one’s nostril comes out black with soot). However, as we walked up the staircase to this grand, amber-hued fortress, the annoyances of India disappeared and we were immediately lost in the “Incredible India” of tourist brochures. Wandering through its hidden passages, gardens, and numerous courtyards of marble and sandstone we were awe-inspired by the beauty of Amber Fort and forgot the travails of travel in India.
Walking on the street one day Kevin and I coined our own slogan, one which we believe fits a bit more properly. It is: WTF, India, or WTFI for short. The proper use of this phase is as follows: It can be used to describe how you feel when your auto-rickshaw dodges a huge tour bus as it speeds past, repeatedly blaring it’s horn, carrying hordes of tourists in search of “Incredible India,” followed by a brigade of camels. It is at this moment that you might feel like exclaiming, above the symphony of blaring horns, “WTFI!”
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